By now, you've surely heard about the terribleturn of events at (perennial Best winner) Longfellow Books this weekend -- during Blizzard Nemo, pipes froze and burst on the floor above the much-loved independent bookshop, causing the in-store sprinklers to go off, damaging at least one-third (probably closer to 40 percent) of the business's inventory.

Portland musician and rock-historian Allen Lowe has a piece in the current issue of the Oxford American, the magazine's 10th annual "Southern Music Issue." He extols the virtues of the Hampton Grease Band, whom he describes as "a group that had everything I liked in not just rock & roll but in all music."

Regardless of the possibly-apocryphal "fact" that the HGB's debut album was, as Lowe notes, the second-lowest selling release in the history of Columbia Records, Lowe's sense of discovery and genuine excitement are palpable - even as he describes guitarist Glenn Phillips as "better and more interesting as a guitarist than Frank Zappa."